Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

Dev.SN ♥ developers

Life On Earth Might Not Be So Special After All

posted by janrinok on Sunday March 02 2014, @09:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the its-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

AnonTechie writes:

"What If We Have Completely Misunderstood Our Place in the Universe ? A Harvard astronomer has a provocative hunch about what happened after the Big Bang. Our universe is about 13 billion years old, and for roughly 3.5 billion of those years, life has been wriggling all over our planet. But what was going on in the universe before that time ? It's possible that there was a period shortly after the Big Bang when the entire universe was teeming with life. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb calls this period the 'habitable epoch,' and he believes that its existence changes how humans should understand our place in the cosmos. The full article is here"

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Life On Earth Might Not Be So Special After All | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 1000 moderator points   | 48 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Sunday March 02 2014, @10:28PM

    by mcgrew (701) on Sunday March 02 2014, @10:28PM (#9876) Homepage Journal

    This was a period when solid matter was an anomaly, before most of the elements on the periodic table existed.

    Hard to see how life could existed...

    --
    Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by nking on Sunday March 02 2014, @10:36PM

    by nking (1921) on Sunday March 02 2014, @10:36PM (#9879)

    I was wondering about this too. He also gives an estimate of about 1 million years for these simple lifeforms (he suggests possibly algae) to evolve before having their planet's environment devastated by global change. Life on Earth took A LOT longer than 1 million years to develop into much of anything, let alone algae (even if life was seeded by asteroids, 1 millions years isn't very long to develop into anything).

  • (Score: 1) by sjames on Sunday March 02 2014, @11:52PM

    by sjames (2882) on Sunday March 02 2014, @11:52PM (#9894)

    I had the same thought. It seems to me that the process that would produce carbon for life happened later. The bit about water was questionable as well.

  • (Score: 1) by bugamn on Monday March 03 2014, @10:15AM

    by bugamn (1017) on Monday March 03 2014, @10:15AM (#10040)

    Or maybe should we say, "Hard to see how life as we know it could exist"?

  • (Score: 1) by bill_mcgonigle on Tuesday March 04 2014, @12:29PM

    by bill_mcgonigle (1105) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @12:29PM (#10722)

    Hard to see how life could existed...

    Most complex life on Earth depends on iodine - atomic number 59 (as far as I know the highest essential element). Iodine didn't exist in the early universe. Based on the metallicity of stars [arxiv.org], we should be looking about two billions years before Earth to find the earliest life, of our type.

    That's still plenty of time to have many races of Ancients around.